i was walking behind a korean man this morning on my way to the bus stop when a minivan came down the road and totally splashed him. i thought maybe the car was going to stop, but it plowed through the puddle at full speed, and i saw this tsunami wave of brown puddle water rise up from the large pothole and almost completely engulfed this korean man. obviously he's an amateur on these streets. i know these roads by heart, and i know which strips of sidewalk become danger zones on rainy days. you only need to be splashed once to learn your lesson and you will never be splashed again. but i think splashing a pedestrian should be a crime punishable by a stiff fine and a hike in your insurance rate. i don't even think people realize what they're doing. they don't make the connection between driving through a puddle and the fact that this will create a large splash that will drench anyone standing around its vicinity. if i ever get splashed again (and it's only happened once, and never again, cause i'm really careful now), i swear, i will drop my bag, throw down my coat, and run to chase down the car that splashed me, or at least get a license plate number, if not follow them home (that's why i've been running all this time, training for that special day). people don't realize this, but i am always looking for an excuse to key somebody's car. you think road rage is scary? honey, you haven't tried pedestrian rage.
crazy "how many miles to park street" guy
commuting stories are a dime a dozen. when you've been riding the t for as long as i have, everything becomes a blur. they're almost like a dream, while it's happening it's so vivid and i want nothing more than to tell the people in my office about my crazy bus/train ride, but as soon as i step off the t, those memories quickly fade away. but occasionally i do have a few that are too good to forget. like today, my subway ride from harvard to kendall. this young man with a young man's beard (all in patches, like his body can't generate the necessary testosterone to grow enough facial hair for him) was sitting down and i was standing, one hand on the metal post, staring at some hiring sign, really just vegging out, listening to my music. he tapped me gently on my coat to get my attention, i looked down at him in this contemptuous kind of way, the kind of way that 6 years of commuting will do to a person, like i can't believe this person is trying to get my attention when anybody else will know that my entire body language said i don't want to be disturbed and please let me have just a few minutes of peace before i am thrown headfirst into the roaring fire of my daily work? anyway, this young man, his pupils really dark, like maybe he's messed up on drugs, asked me, "do you how many miles to park street?" just as i was taking out my earbuds so i could hear his question. "huh?" i replied, even though i heard his question the first time, i just didn't want to make it easy for him. "do you know...how many miles is it...to park street?" he said again. "what?" i grimaced at him, contorting my face so it looked like i was straining to hear him but actually it was more of my contempt face. he repeated one more time, i leaned in closer, not really to hear his question, but maybe it was a subconscious act of attack. i almost wanted to slap him. what kind of question is that? maybe he meant how many stops to park street, surely he can't be seriously asking how many miles? i mean, my educated guess would be 3 miles, but i wasn't going to give him an answer. without even looking at him, i replaced the earbuds back into my ears and said with no emotions whatsoever, "no" in a sarcastically loud way, like i wanted everyone to hear, wanted everyone to know, that i was making a stand for all commuters, that when a crazy person asks me a crazy question, i am not going to honor it with a response. our young taliban wannabe (yeah, he did have a terroristy kind of look) asked a few other people, i totally ignored their replies, cranking up my music two numbers higher to drown out the sound. just a few seconds before we got to kendall, i saw him take out a piece of plastic cellophane tape (it was definitely plastic, it wasn't one of those new mint strips), slowly put it into his mouth, and started chewing on it as if it was gum. when we finally arrived, i got out of the train asap, grateful to have survived an encounter with extreme strangeness.
bird in the office
a bird flew into our second floor office today. it's so dark on rogers street, i think birds naturally get confused and fly into our brightly lit office by instinct. this time i was smart about it, remembering carrie's advice (when they were upstairs and had birds of their own fly into the office) to turn off all the lights and open the windows, the bird will naturally seek the brightest area to escape to. so thinking i could be the hero for the day, i ran to the light switch and turned off all the lights, not realizing that there was a meeting taking place in the small conference room, and suddenly i hear this "hey!" and i quickly turn the lights back on. we ended up driving the bird into the stairs leading to the upstairs office, turned off the lights in the stairwell, opened the window, and seconds later the bird (a female sparrow) flew out.
forgetting how to leave early
you know, i think i'm forgetting how to leave early. well, actually, how to leave on time, like, right at 5pm. i use to be able to do it. when the clock struck 5pm, my computers would immediately shut down and minutes later i'd be out the door in a gust of wind. i'd get home before 6pm, catch some oprah winfrey, sit back and savor the fact that i was able to get home so early (this, after having worked in a company that let us out at 6pm, meaning i didn't get home until 7pm). but now, i'm having a hard time doing that. not sure what it is. maybe it's the social stigma of being that guy who's always the first to leave. but i have no qualms about being that guy. i don't think i have to prove myself anymore in terms of how late i can stay at work. maybe because i have nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. staying a little later, i get to chat with my coworker friends some more, enjoy some of that post-regular work hours mellowness.
give me my drug, damn it!
and finally, went to a cvs in harvard square to get my hbp presciption filled. i literally stood in line for 15 minutes along with a growing bunch of other people before i was able to get some service. there was only one guy dealing with the customers, even though they had 3 other people behind the counter, fill prescriptions i suppose. how hard is it to fill a prescription anyway? it's not rocket science! maybe it's hard deciphering doctors' chicken scratch on those forms. it was just a bad day at cvs. i sort of felt sorry for the lone guy dealing with the disgruntled customers, but he was really slow and couldn't multitask at all (multitasking, an essential 21st century skill). i could see his brain getting slower and slower the more questions he fielded. there was a old woman who could hardly move who wanted to pay for her drugs but also a basket full of other cvs stuff she wanted to buy. the drug counter has a policy of only ringing up a few items with your drugs, but this old woman was paying by check (slow!) and she only had one. another woman was delaying service because her doctor didn't write down the dosage on her prescription, and they couldn't call his office because he had already gone home. yet another woman had 6 prescriptions to fill, but she was going out of town tonight and wanted her medicine before she left, even though the pharmacy guy was telling her it was impossible. finally when it was my turn (i just wanted to fill out a simple prescription! i don't even want it today, i'll pick it up tomorrow!), i gave the guy my plastic drug container and said i wanted a refill. he took a look at it, checked his computer, and said, "your prescription is overdue." "what?" "your prescription is overdue." he sort of stared at me helplessly. "thank you," i replied and then left, looking at the bottle and seeing that it was indeed overdue, by 5 days. i went home and called my doctor, entered my info for the automated refill service, and hopefully go back to cvs tomorrow and be able to pick up my drug.